


you have only just begun

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovered Memories, first step down the road to recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 07:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9538088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It takes you a solid five minutes to open the file, eyes grazing over the pictures hooked to the inside cover. The boy from the museum, sharp in his uniform. You, in the ice. You, in the chair. It takes you even longer to start reading.(it's a process, learning to be angry again)





	

**Author's Note:**

> it's late and im in a Mood™ and im so proud of this boy he was doing so well for himself before the whole shitshow called civil war happened and he did it all by himself?? god bless

 

 

Infiltrating the HYDRA base is more difficult then you thought it would be. 

Not in the sense that it’s particularly difficult to get in, or take Them out before They take you out, or get back out again. You’ve done things like that a million times. No. The hard part is the seeing. 

The hard part is looking at the Chair in the corner and _feeling_ the metal around your wrists and the shocks in your head and the rubber in your mouth. Hearing the last remaining scientist calling you _Soldier_ and hearing gunshots and other whispered languages and knowing—knowing, for the first time in an impossible number of years, that The Soldier is not who you originally were. 

You were someone else, you think, before you were The Soldier. That’s what makes it hard. The look on CaptainSteveCaptainRogers face when he saw the face person you used to be makes it hard. 

Either way, you avoid looking at the Chair and you avoid listening to the agent and you absently hold a gun to him while you search cabinets and drawers for the things you need to find. Files. You want to see ( _you don’t want to see, you don’t want to know_ ) who you were, Before. What they did to make you what you are now. 

You pull open a drawer, and you see it, one of the files you need, see familiar Russian stamped across the front of it—feel nauseous, slam the drawer shut and put a quick, instinctive bullet through it. The clang of the metal shooting through metal echoes throughout the room. The agent flinches, but that doesn’t matter right now. 

You take a breath. One beat, two, and you open it again. Look down, make yourself read the words this time. Feel the shocks in your brain the cold in your bones, and have to shut it again. 

Somewhere, you hear a voice saying _go on, you can do this, Buck_ , and it sounds vaguely like Captain America ( _Steve_ —you read about him in the museum where you saw the boy who shared your face but not your eyes; you know who he is—things are coming back that you did not read in the museum, and you don’t know if that excites you or terrifies you). 

You don’t like feeling like this, feeling queasy and uneasy and afraid—of _paper_ , of what you might find, of what you might be. You decide that you hate it, actually.

(It feels. Weird, hating something again. Not good, exactly. But. Satisfying. It is something all your own—no one ordered you to hate this feeling, you chose to by yourself.) 

You don’t like this feeling, and Captain America is reassuring you, so you slide the drawer open one last time. Ignore the way your flesh hand shakes as you reach for the thick file and drop it on the table in front of you, Too Much to keep in your hand. 

(The guard tries to attack you after this; you shoot him, because he would have shot you, and you think that makes it something different then murder—self defense. Something you had to do. You don’t think too hard about it either way—he was HYDRA, he made you this way.) 

It takes you a solid five minutes to open the file, eyes grazing over the pictures hooked to the inside cover. The boy from the museum, sharp in his uniform. You, in the ice. You, in the chair. 

(There’s such a contrast between the two of you—you share the same jaw and nose and mouth, share the same colored hair, but you do not share the same eyes. His are bright and young and warm, while yours are cold and dead. It makes you feel…not good.)

It takes you even longer to start reading. 

The whole thing is a messy jumble of Russian and English, mission reports and lab notes and journal entries. You know there must be more of all of this, somewhere, but you’ll look for it later. For now, this will do. 

You sit, and you read, and you have to stop a few times. More than a few, because words like _cryofreeze_ or _soldat_ or _comply_ make you freeze up or fade out or make bile rush up your throat along with the memories you don’t want back, things you’re very content to leave buried and forgotten. You don’t want to remember these things, you just want to know who you were. 

You want to recognize the boy in the museum more than you can remember wanting anything. Which isn’t much to go off of, but it’s yours to want. 

You have to pace, or close your eyes and count and count to keep yourself together when you take breaks. You throw the chair once, when the feeling of the rest of your mangled left arm being sawed off comes back so quickly and so violently it has you reeling. 

You don’t know how much time has passed by the time you reach the end (you think you maybe should have just taken the damn thing with you and left, should have read it slowly and in your own time instead of forcing it all at once, because now you are shaky and jumpy and disgusted, confused, _trembling_ —you haven’t trembled this much since the last time you came out of cryo, the cool metal of the floor no different from your own skin), but you reach it. The end of it. 

You back into the wall, grounding metal against your back, holding you in place, and sink, slowly, slowly, to the floor. 

You used to be someone, you think. You were someone else before you were this. Before you were a killer, a soldier, a weapon. 

You were a boy from a city with a mother and a friend, you had a name and you had a job and you went to school for a while, you got the draft, you went to a war you never came home from, you were born somewhere and you had a family, you were not forged in the ice like you thought, like you knew—you danced once, in a kitchen, bare feet against the cool tile floor, music from the radio flowing in the background, lazy movements and idle talk with someone important, someone you cared about, someone who cared about _you_.

You had people you cared about. You had people who cared about you. 

You were _someone_ —you don’t remember all of that someone, but you remember some. You remember enough to know that that someone was taken away. That someone was killed, and you were created in his place—same jaw and nose and mouth but different eyes. A new arm, sewed onto your body without asking, without wanting—you haven’t wanted in so long, an impossible number of years. 

They took that boy, the boy who once was you, and they killed that boy—they killed you, and brought you back to life as someone new, they twisted you up and made you into something you never wanted to be, you never wanted to be this. 

You have killed so many, you have done so many wrongs, and you will never be able to make those wrongs right ( _wake up in the night with screaming in your ears, a motorcycle roaring a car crashing a window breaking a gunshot a child a president an old friend_ ), and you have done these things because of. Because of them.

You have not been your own for an impossible number of years. You are overwhelmed and heaving and your eyes are wet and warm and. You’re suddenly so, so, angry. Upset and horrified and _angry_ —they tore you apart again and again and remade you—they ruined you—and you’re so _angry_ about it. 

You haven’t been angry in an impossible number of years. It’s an anger all your own. You’re going to set this base on fire and then you’re going to go and pick someplace to eat, and you’re going to be angry and upset and it’s going to be _yours._

Eventually, you put the folder back in it’s drawer, set the bomb under the table, walk out as smooth as you like, and light it up. 

The base goes up in flames behind you, but your don’t look back.

You have things to do. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (reviews will prob help me pass my econ test tomorrow)


End file.
